


These Were My People

by ThatAj



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, POV Brian Kinney (Queer as Folk), POV First Person, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-23 21:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16626914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAj/pseuds/ThatAj
Summary: Brian reflects following the massacre at Pulse Nightclub on June 12, 2016.This one-shot is set in 2016. It is separate from the EXPOSURE ‘verse and is post-series. Brian and Justin are together and have been. What happened after Justin left for NYC and how they ended up where they are now is not important to this story.





	These Were My People

**Author's Note:**

> On June 1, 2016 I was held on lockdown on the campus where I then worked while a SWAT team and the police worked to contain an active shooter. There were two fatalities. Eleven days later I awoke to learn of the Pulse Nightclub massacre. These two events were only connected by time and by the feeling that “these were my people.” 
> 
> This last week there was a mass shooting at a bar that directly impacted the campus where I now work. And wildfires are destroying homes and causing fatalities. Every single one of my colleagues has been impacted in some way by one or both of these tragedies. Again these are not related except for the feeling that “these are my people.”
> 
> I know that gun violence and mass shootings happen all too often. The lives lost at UCLA, at Pulse, at Borderline Bar, and in Southern CA are no more or less important than the thousands of others lost to gun violence and climate change. But today as I sat with my colleagues and listened to their stories, I felt something and I needed a way to process and understand it. Thank you for allowing me this outlet.

 

_The devil is blonde_

_and in his blue eyes,_

_love was ignited by two little stars._

_In his tie and red breeches_

_I find the devil quite charming_

_-Frida Kahlo_

We stumbled home around 2 AM after closing down the club. It was Pride weekend after all. We were hot and sticky from the dancing and the fucking and just the goddamn heat and humidity of the mid-June night. We reeked of booze and cigarettes. Justin announced, slurring his words slightly, that he was “way too fucking tired to shower” and peeled off his clothes, dropped into bed, and immediately fell asleep in that way he does. It’s a gift. I pulled the duvet up around him. I showered and puttered around. Unlike Justin, who can fall asleep under nearly any conditions, sleep has never come easily to me.

And so it was that I was awake when the messages and news alerts started lighting up our phones. None of the media outlets were reporting the same details - meaning they didn’t really know what was happening and it was still unfolding. A gay club. Orlando.A shooting. A mass shooting. Maybe a hostage situation. That much they agreed on.

The who. The why. That would come later. If at all.

And I remembered.

A baseball bat.

A bomb.

Did the who and the why really matter?

Would it make a difference if we knew? The dead would still be dead. The injured and the traumatized would still be injured and traumatized. The lives ripped wide open would not be mended if we had a narrative, if we knew what this shooter was thinking. What his _motives_ were.

When the sun rose we would learn of all the people we knew. Everyone would know someone. Or know someone who knew someone. We are family. We are not connected by blood - we can’t be, and we continue to be prohibited from saving each other’s lives simply because of whom we fuck - but we are family. And we all know someone or know someone who knew someone.

And tomorrow, on another campaign stop, or maybe a rerouted visit to the city devastated by this massacre, the presidential candidates would spin this to fit their agenda.

Thoughts and prayers would be offered and received.

And not a goddamn thing would change.

I looked over at the man sprawled across the bed that we shared in the house we had made a home.

And I remembered.

A bomb.

A baseball bat.

A lamppost.

“I wish I had never met him.” The feeling ripped me from heart to gut. It wasn’t a thought. A thought is in your mind. A thought can be examined, argued. This was a feeling.

The same feeling that ripped through me in a parking garage as I held his limp body, blood pooling beneath him, while the cold of the concrete seeped through my trousers.

The same feeling that ripped through me as the cries of the injured and dying echoed in my ears, as I stumbled over the dead, and I felt tears pricking my eyes from the smoke, and I hoarsely called for him.

I wish I had never met him.

Tomorrow would come. Or. rather, later today. We would have to decide whether to go to the Pride parade. We don’t always go. This year our decision would be a statement. A statement that the world is a fucking dark and scary place and we have risked too much already. A statement that no matter what they try to do, they cannot intimidate us; we will never stop fighting for our lives. These colors don’t run.

There was no right answer.

And I wish I had never met him.

I didn’t know what I didn’t have.

My heart and my life, now exist outside my body. I’ve never felt such pure joy. I’ve never loved like this. I’ve never been loved like this. I’ve never known and been known.

But I didn’t know what I didn’t have.

I’ve never felt such pure fear. I’ve never prayed to a deity I’m not sure exists to please please please let me trade places with him. Let me be the one limp and cold in a parking garage. Let me be the one struggling to breathe and trying to escape a bombed out building that was once my home.

And just as soon as the prayer leaves my lips, I want to bite it back, take it back in, and swallow it. Because to trade places would mean that he had to wonder if the one he loved - if the one whose chest now holds his heart - would live. And wonder, if not, how does one take the next breath? And the next? And a lifetime more of breaths with an organ beating in your chest that is not your heart. It cannot be your heart because your heart was in him.

All the moments in our lives. All the moments in the world and in the universe that counted down to seeing him under that lamppost. And from that moment on, I could never not see him again.

I wish I had never met him.

I had never known heaven, and I had never known hell. If I had never stopped and looked up and saw him standing there, I would never have had to make their acquaintance.

I looked over and he was snoring softly, reaching his arm out as if to find me next to him.

I can’t imagine living without him.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my Beta TrueIllusion for being so fast and letting me get my feelings out while I'm having them.


End file.
